The waitress wrote it down. “You’re not having anything but coffee, Miss?”

“I just told you, didn’t I?” Furia said with a stare.

She left fast. His stare warmed as he watched her behind. “No wonder Hinch got his tongue hanging out. I could go for a piece of that myself.”

Flying all right.

“Fure-”

“She don’t know you from her old lady’s mustache.” His tone said that the subject was closed. Goldie shut her eyes again.

When his steak came it was too rare. Another time he would have turned nasty and fired it back. As it was he ate it, grousing. Steaks were a problem with him. Cooks always thought the waitress had heard wrong. He hated bloody meat. I ain’t no goddam dog, he would say.

He hacked off massive chunks, including the fat, and bolted them. The fork never left his fist. Goldie sipped carefully. Her skin was one big itch. Psycho-something, a doctor had told her. He had sounded like some shrink and she had never gone back. It had been worse recently.

Hinch was working away on the girl behind the counter, she was beginning to look sore.

One of these days I’m going to ditch these creeps.

At eleven o’clock, as Furia was stabbing his last slice of potato, the shortorder man turned on the radio. Goldie, on her feet, sat down again.

“Now what?”

“That’s the station at Tonekeneke Falls, WRUD, with the late news.”

“So?”

“Fure, I have this feeling.”

“You and your feels,” Furia said. “You’re goosier than an old broad tonight. Let’s hit it.”

“Will it hurt to listen a minute?”

He sat back comfortably and began to pick his teeth with the edge of a matchpacket cover. “First you can’t wait to blow the dump-”

He stopped. The announcer was saying: “-this bulletin. Thomas F. Howland, bookkeeper of the Aztec Paper Products company branch in New Bradford, was found in his office a few minutes ago shot to death.